President Obama today signed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act into law. That's a long-winded legal name for an act that protects a TON of public land that has until now lived under constant threat.
This is a massive piece of legislation that includes dozens of bills that protect land across the US. But what does it mean for the Sierra Nevada? The bill protects 470,000 acres of the Eastern Sierra including additional land added to the John Muir Wilderness, Ansel Adams Wilderness and Hoover Wilderness, as well as Kings Canyon and Sequoia National parks.
According to the text of the bill there are 5 new officially designated wilderness areas in the Eastern Sierra including the Owens River Headwaters Wilderness, White Mountains Wilderness, Granite Mountain Wilderness, Magic Mountain Wilderness, and Pleasant View Ridge Wilderness areas. Amen!
Here are the President's remarks upon signing the act via The New York Times:
This legislation -- just to give you a sense of the scope -- this
legislation guarantees that we will not take our forests, rivers,
oceans, national parks, monuments, and wilderness areas for granted;
but rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone
to share. That's something all Americans can support...
It protects treasured places from the Appalachians of Virginia
and West Virginia to Michigan's Upper Peninsula; from the canyons of
Idaho to the sandstone cliffs of Utah; from the Sierra Nevadas in
California to the Badlands of Oregon.
It designates more than 2
million acres across nine states as wilderness; almost as much as was
designated over the past eight years combined.
It creates
thousands of miles of new scenic, historic, and recreational trails,
cares for our historic battlefields, strengthens our National Park
System.
It safeguards more than 1,000 miles of our rivers,
protects watersheds and cleans up polluted groundwater, defends our
oceans and Great Lakes, and will revitalize our fisheries, returning
fish to rivers that have not seen them in decades.
